Launching in beta, you can now view and edit client-side encrypted Excel files with Google Sheets. Any changes made are saved in the original Excel format. We are making it easy for you to leverage Google Workspace with the tools and formats you already use while preserving confidentiality of your sensitive data with client-side encryption.
In Google Sheets, navigate to File > Import.
Additional details
With this release:
You can only view and edit .xslx Excel file types. Additional Excel and tabular file types are not supported.
The maximum supported file size is 20MB.
Maximum number of cells that can be opened is 5 million.
As we continue to improve Office editing in encrypted Google Sheets, you may encounter incompatibilities for certain features.
Some features are not displayed and/or editable, but will be preserved in the document and viewable in Microsoft Office.
Other features may be lost or altered in the latest version of the file when it is edited in Google Sheets. You will see a notification within the document if editing will cause any features to be lost or altered.
Getting started
Admins: Client-side encryption can be enabled at the domain, OU, and Group levels (Admin console > Security > Access and data control > Client-side encryption). Visit our Help Center to learn more about client-side encryption.
Beginning today, you’ll see a new independent security verification badge for select apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace. This badge indicates that the app was validated by an independent security assessor to meet the integration and security requirements, as outlined in Tier 3 of the Cloud Application Security Assessment.
In the Marketplace, you can already see app information like information about app access to user data, who the developer is and their privacy policies, and more. Surfacing this additional app security information helps admins make an even more informed decision before installing or allowlisting apps for their users.
By simply typing a few words in Help me visualize, you can easily create original images for your presentations.
Whether you’re a creative agency developing early campaign concepts for a client or a consulting firm enhancing your annual planning proposal, this feature empowers everyone, regardless of artistic skill, to create unique, AI-generated images that help communicate ideas more impactfully, with less effort.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it matters
This feature exemplifies a dynamic new way of working that embeds the power of generative AI in Slides by enabling you to bring your creative vision to life with custom auto-generated images.
Getting started
Admins: This feature will be ON by default and there is no admin control for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise.
End users:
To add an image, go to Insert > Image > Help me visualize or tap the Help me visualize icon in the toolbar > go to the sidebar> type in an image description (optionally select a style for your image) > click Create > then, you will see generated options > select the one you like and it will be added to your slide.
On web and mobile, you can draft and reply to messages in Gmail. Upon selecting the Help me write button, you can choose between the following options:
Write your draft: Use your own words to describe the message you’d like to draft. Help me write also understands the context from previous messages in an email thread to craft reply drafts that are relevant to the conversation.
Formalize your draft: Change the tone of your draft to be more formal.
Elaborate on your draft: Add further detail to your email message to build on the draft.
Shorten your draft: Decrease the length of your email draft.
I’m feeling Lucky: Introduce fun variations on tone and style for content you’ve drafted.
Whether you’re setting up a meeting with a prospective client or reworking an intro email for a new team member, Help me write in Gmail saves you the time by eliminating the tedious task of writing emails and provides the right tone and style for any message occasion.
Duet AI in Gmail formalizing notes into a polished email.
Using Help me write in Docs, simply type a few words describing a topic you’d like to write about and a draft will be instantly generated for you. You can see suggestions as needed and refine the generated content further with the following options:
Tone: Change the tone of the content to be more casual or more formal.
Summarize: Generate a summary for an entire document or a section.
Bulletize: Use bullets to represent your text.
Elaborate: Add further detail to build on the generated text.
Shorten: Make your content more concise by decreasing its length.
Retry: Receive a different generated draft based on your description.
Custom: Provide your own instruction to refine the generated content.
Whether you’re a recruiter drafting a customized job description or an account executive drafting a sales pitch, Help me write saves you the time and effort of writing the first version of a document by enabling you to focus on bringing your ideas to life instead of conquering a blank page.
Duet AI in Docs helping to write a job description.
We’re also combining the power of smart canvas with Help me write by weaving smart chips, variables, and building blocks into generated content. This combination will help if you need to include information like status or add variables for details you’d want to customize like your teammate’s names, job titles and more. By providing you with structured data and shortcuts to take action when creating comprehensive plans or messages, this update will help you go from concept to completion much faster without ever leaving your document.
Who’s impacted
End users
Getting started
Admins: This feature will be ON by default and there is no admin control for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise.
Google Docs offers several existing capabilities to help you write faster and with more confidence, such as grammar suggestions, smart compose, and smart reply. Today, we’re introducing the next generation of writing suggestions, powered by AI: Proofread.
In addition to spelling and grammar, Proofread will provide a list of suggestions you can review and accept, including:
Conciseness: Suggestions for making your writing more concise
Active voice: Suggestions for making your writing more clear to readers
Wording: Suggestions for making words sound more dynamic or formal in context
Sentence Split: Suggestions for splitting up complex sentences to make your writing easier to read
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
Proofread is our latest innovation that helps you more easily and quickly compose high-quality content in Google Docs. It can help improve conciseness and make your documents clearer and easier to read. These suggestions are non-intrusive and won’t clutter your document as you compose and collaborate — you can easily review all suggestions directly from the Proofread sidebar whenever you’re ready and decide which suggestions are most appropriate for you to accept. Plus, you can customize the types of suggestions you’ll see via the filter option, helping ensure we’re giving you the most relevant suggestions.
Additional details
If you’re currently participating in alpha testing for Proofread, you’ll need to purchase the Duet AI for Workspace Enterprise add-on to continue using this feature. If not, you will no longer be able to access the feature beginning on August 29, 2023.
This feature will be ON by default and can be turned off in Docs by going to Tools > Proofread. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Proofread in Docs.
You can open the Proofread sidebar by selecting this icon:
There will be a bluedot alongside this icon when there are writing suggestions for your document:
If you have Duet AI for Google Workspace, you can now translate English and non-English speech to and from the following languages:
Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional)
Hindi (India)
Thai
Italian
Russian
This adds to the existing list of languages: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedish, Chinese (Simplified), Vietnamese, Dutch, Turkish, Indonesian.
Additionally, you can translate non-English speech to and from the following languages:
Meeting participants: You can use live translated captions if you’re using an eligible Google Workspace edition or the meeting is organized by a user with an eligible Google Workspace edition.
Note: Translated captions in Google Meet will be available exclusively to Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise add-on users at a future date. We will provide a minimum of 6 months notice to existing Google Workspace customers before this change takes place.
We know that communication and collaboration happens over multiple channels and tools. This can cause missed messages, silos of communication, and a frustrating experience monitoring multiple chat tools.
That’s why we’re partnering with Mio, a leading provider of collaborative interoperability solutions helping customers enhance their productivity by streamlining communication across multiple channels. You can leverage Mio to create a seamless experience between Chat and the various tools you need to get your work done.
Getting started
Admins: To request beta access or to discuss pricing for your organization, reach out to your account rep or submit this form to contact Mio.
Availability
Note: In order to leverage Mio’s interoperability capabilities, Mio licenses are required.
General Availability:
Available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline Starter, Frontline Standard, and Nonprofits customers
Create your custom background from the Meet greenroom
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why you’d use it
In addition to protecting your privacy during video calls, you can generate a background that enhances the meeting itself. For example, you can create a background specific to your clients and the industry they work with, helping to deepen the connection through visual reinforcement. You can create backgrounds that set the tone for kicking off an important project, or one befitting of celebrating a company or colleague milestone.
To enable or disable immersive backgrounds and styles, go to Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Google Meet > Meet video setting. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to control whether users can change their backgrounds in Meet.
Google Meet already offers a variety of tools to help you appear your best during meetings, including automatic framing and lighting adjustments. Today, we’re taking these enhancements a step further by introducing studio look in Google Meet, powered by Duet AI. Studio look enhances the quality of your portrait by reducing noise and increasing sharpness, bringing you into focus more clearly.
In the hybrid work world, our video feeds can be hindered by low light or lower quality webcams. Studio look helps ensure you’re coming across crisp and in focus, helping strengthen human connections in a hybrid work world.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be available by default. You can turn studio look on before a call or during a call from the three-dot settings menu. Visit the Help Center to learn more about improving your video experience with studio look.
Through Duet AI for Google Workspace, you can now use Google Sheets to quickly get started organizing your data in a straightforward, highly-visual manner. By simply describing what you want to accomplish using Help me organize, Sheets will generate a plan, tracker, budget, schedule, and more in the form of a template with sample text and smart chips that are easily editable. Once inserted into the grid, you can make the template your own by assigning owners, updating statuses, and bringing in relevant information such as location or time.
Whether you’re a travel agent planning a trip for a company retreat or a team lead establishing onboarding plans for new hires, Help me organize gives you a running start for creating highly-organized plans, trackers, timelines and more.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it’s important
Through the power of Duet AI for Google Workspace, you can now get started organizing information faster than ever before in Google Sheets.
Additional details
Help me organize makes template tables with sample data, and does not have access to the data within your spreadsheet or elsewhere.
Getting started
Admins: This feature will be ON by default and there is no admin control for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise.
End users:
To use the Help me organize feature, write a description of what you need in the sidebar > click Create > View the generated table preview.
Note: You must write a minimum of 2 characters in the sidebar. The maximum number of characters is 150.
The Help me organize sidebar is surfaced for any empty tab (new or existing Sheets files).
You can re-open Help me organize from the insert menu or the toolbar via a new icon. You can also re-trigger the sidebar when adding a new tab.
If you’re a Google Workspace admin, you can now track the carbon footprint and gross emissions of using Google Workspace. This means you can track the emissions impact of tools such as Google Meet, Gmail, Google Docs, and more.
Who’s impacted
Admins
Why it matters
We’ve heard from our customers that it would be helpful to understand their organization’s carbon emissions from Google Workspace product usage. For many of our customers, sustainability has become an increasingly important factor for IT-related decision making and resource allocation.
We’re making this information easily accessible to our customers in the Admin console. Using the Carbon Footprint reporting tool, you can:
View aggregated emission data for your organization over time, broken down by service. You’ll be able to sort this information, month over month as well.
You can break down emission data by service, such as Gmail or Drive .
Additional details
At Google, we continue to make product and operational improvements to reduce environmental impact. Our goal is to run on carbon-free energy, 24/7, at all of our data centers and cloud regions by 2030. Plus, we’re sharing technology, methods, and funding to enable organizations around the world to transition to more carbon-free and sustainable systems — see here for more information about our sustainability commitments.
Google uses the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the global standard for carbon accounting to generate the Carbon footprint reports. We recommend that admins familiarize themselves with the GHG terminology — you can find more information in our Help Center or the video below.
Getting started
Admins: You can find your Carbon Footprint report in the Admin console under Reporting > Carbon footprint. Visit the Help Center to learn more about the Workspace Carbon Footprint.
Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise enables organizations to create, connect, and collaborate like never before.
You can use Duet AI to:
Help you write and refine emails in Gmail - even on the go from your mobile device
Help you write, refine, and proofread content in Google Docs
Generate original images for your presentations directly in Google Slides
Create plans for projects in Google Sheets with just a simple prompt
Look your best in Google Meet with studio look
Generate background images in Google Meet
Use translated captions in Google Meet
In the coming months, we’ll be introducing more features for Duet AI such as studio lighting and sound for Meet, Enhanced Smart Fill for Google Sheets and more. We’ll share more details here on the Workspace Updates blog as those features become available.
The Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise add-on is available for purchase with the following Google Workspace editions:
Business Standard and Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, Education Fundamentals, Frontline Starter and Frontline Standard
Note: Duet AI features are only available for users over the age of 18.
In order to support other forms of grading, such as letter grades or proficiency ratings (ex. unsatisfactory to excellent), we’re introducing customizable grading scales so that a school’s or teacher’s grading preferences are better reflected in Google Classroom. With this update, teachers will have the option to select from numerical, letter grade, proficiency, four-point grading scales, or set up their own scale.
Once the grading scale is selected and personalized (if the teacher chooses to do so), teachers can create assignments right away and any existing assignments will automatically have their newly selected grading scale. When grading assignments, teachers can enter either the grade with the points value or the level from the grading scale and Classroom will automatically display both to teachers and to students once a grade is returned.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
This feature gives teachers more flexibility in deciding which grading scales to use for assignments and classwork.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users:
To configure grading scales including accessing grading scale templates, go to Class settings > scroll down to the Grading Scales settings > click Add. From there you can either choose a pre-set grading scale or create your own scale.
Teachers also have the option to copy other classes once they have grading scales set up.
Any new classes created will have the grading scale from the last edited class.
Space managers and members can now copy the email addresses of members in a space on Google Chat. This option is ON by default for spaces with 100 members or less. The option to copy space member email addresses will be disabled in spaces with 100+ members.
Filter by expression for Connected Sheets for Looker
You can now use common filter expressions from Looker such as “last 30 days”, “last quarter”, or “NOT 50” to filter on pivot tables in Connected Sheets for Looker. | Learn more about Connected Sheets.
Previous announcements
The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
View speaker notes while co-presenting Google Slides in Google Meet
Co-presenters are now also able to view speaker notes. | Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching & Learning Upgrade, and Workspace Individual customers only. | Learn more about viewing speaker notes while co-presenting Google Slides in Google Meet.
Stronger protection for additional sensitive actions taken in Gmail
View & compare script versions with Apps Script project history
We're announcing project history, a new interface for developers to view previously deployed script versions and compare versions to the current script version. | Learn more about Apps Script project history.
Displaying Microsoft Outlook users as organizers in Google Calendar
Microsoft Outlook user who organize meetings are now listed amongst the other meeting attendees in Calendar as the meeting organizer. | Learn more Microsoft Outlook organizers in Google Calendar.
Introducing Workday app for Google Chat
We’re adding a new Workday app for Google Chat that allows you to perform quick actions in Workday, such as requesting time off, filing expense reports and looking up colleague's information, all without leaving Google Chat. | Learn more about the Workday app for Google Chat.
Join client-side encrypted meetings from your mobile device
You can join a client-side encrypted meeting directly from the Google Meet and Calendar apps. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus customers hosting client-side encrypted calls only. | Learn more about client-side encrypted meetings from your mobile device.
Third-party app access enhancements for Google Workspace for Education
All Google Workspace for Education Admins must review and confirm access settings for third-party configured apps that are currently accessible to your users by Oct 23, 2023 in order for users designated as under 18 to maintain access to those third-party apps. | Available to Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade only. | Learn more about third-party app access.
Enhance your Google Keep notes on Android with rich text formatting
We’re adding rich text formatting options to new notes on Keep. This highly requested feature enables you to customize and add emphasis to your text through bolding, underlining, italicizing, and heading styles. | Learn more about rich text formatting on the Keep app.
Users designated as under 18 using the age-based access setting are required to request access to apps that aren’t already configured by admins with a trusted, limited, or blocked access setting.
All Google Workspace for Education Admins must review and confirm access settings for third-party configured apps that are currently accessible to your users by Oct 23, 2023 in order for users designated as under 18 to maintain access to those third-party apps. You’ll have the option to allow users designated as under 18 to skip requesting access for all unconfigured apps that only ask for basic profile information for authentication purposes. These apps will be accessible for users designated as under 18 without further configuration on your part.
Who’s impacted
Admins, end users, and developers
Why it matters
Third-party app settings are important for protecting users’ data. We are providing enhanced app access controls to manage access to third-party applications for users designated as under 18. Google Workspace for Education Admins are required to confirm third-party app settings for third-party apps currently accessible by users in their institution by October 23, 2023 to avoid disrupting access to third-party applications for users designated as under 18.
Additional details
If you’d like to set different levels of access for specific sets of users, you can now configure third-party app access by organizational units.
Getting started
Admins:
To confirm access settings for third-party apps or review third-party apps requested by users designated as under 18, go to the Admin Console > navigate to the App access control card > click Review apps for apps you want to make accessible to users designated as under 18 > click Configure access on the selected app. You can also get started with the guided experience here.
Client-side encryption gives users direct control of their encryption keys and the identity service that authenticates those keys. Further, client-side encryption ensures that Google cannot access audio and video content under any circumstances. Our original announcement has more information about client-side encryption in Meet.
Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus customers hosting client-side encrypted calls
Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, The Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Frontline, and Nonprofits customers
End users: If allowed by your admin, you’ll be able to install Google Chat apps using the “New chat” button in Google Chat. The apps you install will appear in the Chat conversation list.
Rollout pace
This feature is available now for all users.
Availability
Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts
A more detailed view of how many members are engaging with content in spaces can be seen by hovering over the message, selecting the three-dot menu, and clicking “See message views”.
Additional details
The view counts in spaces will be available for messages sent on August 1, 2023 and beyond. Additionally, view counts are not available for in-line replies.
In the Google Cloud Community, connect with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like yourself. Participate in product discussions, check out the Community Articles, and learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what's happening with Google Workspace.
On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.